Friday, January 9, 2015

Does your children
know who poor people are ? - Poor is an adjective related to a state of
poverty, low quality or pity. People who are poor are people who cannot make
ends meet. A poverty measurement isn’t
quite like most economic measurements, after all. To measure poverty, you have
to define it, and intrinsic in any definition of poverty are judgments about
what it means to be poor, what it means to be not-poor—and what the second
group owes the first. Poverty in India is widespread, and a variety of methods
have been proposed to measure it. The official measure of Indian government,
before 2005, was based on food security and it was defined from per capita
expenditure for a person to consume enough calories and be able to pay for
associated essentials to survive.

There cannot be any
fixed benchmark and any measurement will have to be revised from time to time.
In July 2014, a RBI report stated that those spending over Rs 32 a day in rural
areas and Rs 47 in towns and cities should not be considered poor. Though many
would clamour to be listed as poor when receiving free grants of Govt or get
benefits - everyone would like to become
rich and famous overnight ~ currency notes, especially fresh ones fascinate
people !!!

Only in Movies, we
have seen gold biscuits in suitcase and currency in huge volume. We have seen stash of currency notes only in
films. In Mani Rathnam’s ‘Thiruda
Thiruda’ it was freshly printed bank notes of incredible 10 billion value in
container lorry and the money trail by a group that formed the main storyline. In
Arjun starrer Gentleman too, so much of currencies would flow. In Rajnikant’s ‘Sivaji – The Boss’, in the
climax fight on the roof of educational institution where Rajni would hit
Suman, currencies hidden in roof would rain down even as the hero would leap,
fly, dance, spin and hit – as the bald eagle smacks the villain, currency notes
would fly in the air, much to the glee of those students who had paid
exorbitantly to get a seat !.

If you that it was
hyped movie scene, Times of India reports of an incident where Rs 2.5 crore tumbled out of car after
accident on highway.

Going by this
report, the Salem-Kochi national highway was strewn with cash on Wednesday
morning after `Rs.500 notes started falling out of a car that had been hit by a
bus near Coimbatore. Minutes later, hundreds of villagers and witnesses
converged on the spot to gather the money. Police and Income tax officials are
yet to ascertain the exact amount which was transported in the car.

Yasser Arafat, 28,
Jaleel, 38, and Jaffer, 40, were driving from Erode to Malappuram in an Innova
car when their vehicle collided with a TNSTC (Tamil Nadu State Transport
Corporation) bus at the Bodipalayam junction. The front doors of the car were
flung open in the impact, releasing bundles of cash. Police found bundles of
cash hidden inside the car, under the seats, in the dashboard and boot. While
the police sent Yasser and Jaleel to government hospital, Jaffer was
interrogated.

Police informed Income
tax officials about the incident and managed to secure Rs.2.44 lakh. They
believe the car was carrying close to Rs.2.5cr. “The IT department has
deposited the cash in a bank,” said an officer from the Madukarai police
station. Jaleel and Jaffer told police that the money belonged to a man named
Mustafa. They claimed that they were
just told to transfer the unaccounted money to Malappuram, but did not know its
source or destination,” said the police officer.

Sounds a simple
statement – when one is required to fill up PAN no. for any cash transaction
exceeding Rs.50000/- carrying so much of money and pretending to not knowing
anything smacks of some serious crime.
There is always lurking fear of hawala transactions and money for crime
flowing unabated. Police must take
serious action on this.